Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich is a learned individual and a student of history. He also has an affable sense of humor. However, he is well known for his exaggerated sense of Republican Partisanship.
Still, the essence of American political discourse is a battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.
So, you may appreciate a recent article about Newt from the Atlantic Monthly
Plot Spoiler: The author, Mckay Coppins, blames Mr. Gingrich for the Partisan Politics that seems to be tearing the country apart and which swept President Trump into office.
Good Republicans are those who either agree with Democrats on selected issues (the late Senator McCain, current Senator Flake) or those who lost elections to Democrats (President Ford, President GHW Bush). Articulate conservatives must be defeated, we don’t have gulags yet, history is to be re-written.
“He started it,” is childish and false. In 1960 Senator Kennedy called Vice President Nixon’s skepticism of increased government as “mean spirited.” In 1964 it was Johnson for President or Goldwater will cause nuclear war or secession. The long march of the neo-marxists through our institutions, including government began during the misnamed “progressive” era, around Theodore Roosevelt’s time. Since then, government has grown faster than the private property economy that feeds it. Opponents are “mean spirited,” and “racist.”
In the 1992 presidential primary, Governor Clinton called himself a “new Democrat” and promised to “end welfare as we know it.” Upon taking office with his party in control of both Houses of Congress, he raised taxes and tried but failed to socialize medicine, welfare reform was forgotten. Republicans won Congress in 1994, the media blamed “angry white males.” I think it was demographics, the boomer generation reached their peak earning and tax-paying years at the same time reactionary talk radio peaked. The Republican Congress passed, and Clinton signed some welfare reform (since bypassed by other programs), a balanced budget and a capital gains tax cut. Speaker Gingrich, et al., extended the life of the Occident as a place where Liberty and personal responsibility still dwell.
Can’t have that, Republicans must acquiesce, those who don’t must be extremists.
Opponents are called racist? Beware of racist dogs too. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6401779/The-DOG-accused-hate-crime-fouling-outside-home-just-one-2-500-cases-probed.html
Double talk is part of the totalitarian program. Gingrich was a heretic. Here is a related article on the anti-liberty cancer in our nation.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/11/21/the-fruits-of-college-indoctrination/
Ian: Having visited the link you have supplied, WinLoseorDraw has discovered that some reports of people characterizing normally aggravating incidents as Racism. For instance, when a white man’s dog takes a dump on a black man’s lawn, some black men might become annoyed enough to mis-characterize such an incident as racially motivated. Regrettable that some Americans (on both sides) have such thin skins.
Speaking of the need for thicker skin: All the regrettable incidents of inflamed rhetoric combined would not add up to a “totalitarian program.”
If there is a “totalitarian program,” please let me know. That would mean that we must organize the citizen’s militia.
VDH outlines part of the programming here.https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/18/the-progressive-synopticon/
So you would say that Newt’s bombastic rhetoric and President Trump’s bombastic rhetoric serves a higher purpose?
Let’s concede that they may be personally reprehensible, but still may be on the right side of History.
It may be time for Americans of all political persuasions to grow a thicker skin.
Yes, Newt’s deeply accurate rhetoric helped to educate enough voters in 1994 to delay the neomarxist statist devolution. Trump’s bombastic crap helped him get elected, a far less damaging result to civil society than the alternative in the 2016 general election for president.
What does “right side of history” mean?
I do not concede.
You can go back beyond 1960. The communists in 1848 Europe demonized employers by calling them exploiters and thieves as in “all property is theft.” Marx and Engels said, “Some say we are against property. No! We are against private property!” Later, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Guevara, Castro and Pol Pot murdered many millions in the cause of their damned lies.
In the US men who created affordable steel, railroads, shipping and banking that greatly benefited the vast majority of people were slandered as “robber barons,” lies that persist in history textbooks. Federal government policies turned the 1929 recession into the Great Depression but free enterprise was falsely blamed and government was presented as the solution. This false history has been taught to four generations. Anti-communism was reframed to somehow become worse than communism.
Before the 1995 rise of Newt Gingrich to Speaker of the House, Democrats slandered successful business as “greed” while using government power to seize an increasing share of wealth from the taxpayers. Before Gingrich, any slowing of the rate of increase in government dependency-producing programs were called “cuts” that harm the poor, starve children, destroy education and poison the environment. Captain Planet was a cartoon 1990-1996 that taught children that capitalism was destroying the planet.
Mckay Coppins continues the marxist tradition of lies upon lies.
Reid:
Thank you for coming to the defense of Newt Gingrich and American capitalism.
In his article entitled “Newt Gingrich, the Man who Broke Politics,” McKay Coppins was, I believe, attempting to highlight Newt’s contribution to the devisive and partisan atmosphere that is infecting our American political discussions currently. I happen to agree with him on this one point.
Both Mr. Coppins and I see partisan bickering as counter-productive and destructive.
You accuse Mr. Coppins of telling “lies.”
In response to your comment, I have re-read the Coppins article, looking for lies; and I have found none.
Mr. Coppins did quote Mr. Gingrich as follows:
JUNE 24, 1978
“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” he told the group. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics.”
For their party to succeed, Gingrich went on, the next generation of Republicans would have to learn to “raise hell,” to stop being so “nice,” to realize that politics was, above all, a cutthroat “war for power”—and to start acting like it.
I must be one of those mis-guided “Boy Scouts” Mr. Gingrich spoke of. I do not want American politics to remain a “cutthroat ‘war for power.'”
Your response, Reid, indicates to me that you perceive Mr. Gingrich to be a standard bearer for the highly valued American free enterprise ideals as currently expressed in our capitalist system. I agree with you.
Free Enterprise and Equality are the two legs upon which America stands. We need to protect and defend both values.
If Mr. Gingrich had not dismissed half the American populace, his legacy might have been far less transitory.
United we stand, divided we fall.—Aesop and the New Testament originally
The lie is that Gringrich broke politics, that he was somehow the start of divisiveness. I tried to show the lies that have been festering since the 1890s. The division between liberty and statism been long strong with statism advancing. The 1978 quote attributed to Gingrich is an interesting opposite of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (1971).
Reid:
Newt Gingrich’s coin of the realm was “divisiveness,” but you are absolutely right that “divisiveness” did not originate with him. You are also correct to point out Saul Alinsky as an example of a partisan political ideolog from the opposite political camp. His rule #5 (“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”) proves that he is unwilling to play by the unwritten rules of civilized discourse.
WinLoseorDraw believes that Newt Gingrich’s partisan rhetoric was and is, unfortunately, one of many divisive and unhelpful political tactics employed by both sides of the political spectrum.
Reading between the lines of your comment, WinLoseorDraw gets the feeling that your worst nightmare is creeping “statism.” If that is correct, WinLoseorDraw shares your concerns.
Statism is defined as “a political system in which the state has substantial centralized control over social and economic affairs.”
Ask yourself this question: Where does the greatest threat of “centralized control over social and economic affairs” reside? Is the greatest threat a Saul Alinsky type grassroots community organizer who advocates for the poor? Or, is the greater threat a Newt Gingrich-like head of one of only two viable American political parties which controls the Presidency in majority years?
Thank you for spoiling a spoiled plot, it will save me precious dwindling time.